Well-informed sources in Stockholm have been whispering for a few years the name of Jamaica Kincaid (Saint John, 1949) as a serious candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature. This author from the Caribbean island of Antigua – which became independent in 1981 – sees how, as a result of this interest, her books are published all over the world. Discovered among us at the end of the 80s by Alfaguara and later published by Edhasa, Lumen and Txalaparta, now Lumen and Les Hores reissue some of their best titles, such as My brother (original from 1997) – the true story of his delinquent brother , died of AIDS at the age of 33– and My Mother’s Autobiography (1995), which are added to the already existing Annie John (1985), At the Bottom of the River (1983), A Small Place (1988), Lucy (1990 ) or Mr. Potter (2002). Kincaid attended this newspaper last Friday by videoconference from Vermont, in the United States, where she has lived since the mid-1960s.
She says in her book that she became a writer precisely thanks to her brother. “In fact, when he was born I was 13 years old, I remember him well because his arrival in the world is what made them send me to the United States as a maid, to take care of children, so I could earn money to send to my family. If I hadn’t gone to the US, it’s unlikely I would have realized what I am, and I wouldn’t be here talking to you now.” Her work, yes, was improving: she was an editor for The New Yorker and, still today, a professor at Harvard University.
Antigua – an island discovered by Christopher Columbus himself in 1493 – is very important to Kincaid because “my personality was formed when I was 7 years old and I have not changed anymore, I have only expanded this person, I am 7 years old, I am frozen at that age, I am the same”.
In the book, there is a moment when she is upset by the distance between the two worlds where she lives (USA and Antigua), because she even has a hard time understanding the language her family speaks. “We spoke broken English or Patois. When I come back from the United States I have a little trouble understanding it but I get it right away. As a child, you quickly understand that you don’t have to speak this way, and if your parents have ambitions for you, they don’t allow you to use that language. There was this thinker, Frantz Fanon, who talked about a ‘double consciousness’, in his book Black skin, white masks, all of that is true, but at the same time it’s a great advantage if you’re an artist, because it’s very interesting to have a double consciousness. double. If you choose to exploit it, it is a gift!”
There is a moment when the brother asks him “as a result of a novel that I had written where a mother tried to abort a child, and the abortion does not work, if he was that child. I told him no, but he really was. I didn’t dare tell him.” Right now in the US abortion is undergoing new restrictions. “I myself was not my mother’s first pregnancy,” she answers. I was born when she was in her 30s, it’s late in our culture. I don’t think she was a wanted daughter, that she really wanted to have children, but we got there. Knowing that she tried to abort these embryos or cells or whatever we want to call them, makes me feel nothing but empathy for someone who was not able to control her life. I did not have to be born, it is not necessary for any of us to be here, the Earth will be perfectly the same with or without us… even if no human was born! If men are so concerned about people’s lives, why don’t they stop wars? A woman who only aspires to have a small space to fulfill herself and try to discover who she is, even if she is wrong, is not a crime, a crime is to kill women in the Ukraine, to kill people in the Congo. These robed gentlemen, the US Supreme Court justices opposed to abortion, without any problem sign the petitions to electrocute prisoners. That does not concern them, it seems that they want to have people to kill, they love to kill. Denying the right to abortion unnerves me more than racism, you can expect people to be racist, but I do not accept that anyone controls my body, that is slavery, it is the most primary form of slavery!
In her works she is very critical of the lack of services and corruption in Antigua. “When I wrote it I had more faith in life in the US,” he admits, “I thought it was a democracy, a liberal society, but I doubt I would criticize Antigua as much now as I did then because the US has become more like that, and in the worst possible way. For example, Donald Trump is a person that you would expect to find in places like Antigua, which is to say what he calls ‘a shitty country’, maybe it turns out that the US has become a shitty country.”
His brother was involved in robberies, drugs and even a murder. Has he ever thought that she could have fallen into this dark side of life? “We had very different childhoods, I was an only child until I was 9 years old and my mother sent me to good schools, I was always well fed and dressed… There are flowers that do not open, dry and wither, and he does not never bloomed. If I had stayed in Antigua I don’t think I would have fallen to the dark side, and if I had it would have been not in crime but in having many children, or becoming a prostitute, something like that. But I was also brought up not to like sex, maybe the dark part would have been being a sadomasochistic woman, ha ha!
In early October, we will have his new book, Now and Then. “It is difficult to read -he warns-, it is not for everyone, because it breaks a rule to which current readers have become spoiled: that there has to be an argument, I do not believe in arguments or stories! Look, I am heavily influenced by three things: the Oxford English Dictionary, the Bible, and John Milton’s Paradise Lost. If you mix these readings, you can understand what my writing is like.”
To finish, we tell you that, if the Caribbean were a State, it would be one of those that has received the most Nobel Prizes for Literature, adding those for Spanish, English and French, and now has candidates such as Kincaid herself or Guadeloupean Maryse Count. What do you think of Derek Walcott, V.S. Naipaul, Garcia Marquez…? “Derek was a great friend, he was like a father, always very kind, I can say that he loved him. Naipaul I feel bad that he died but the truth is that he would never have wanted me to sit next to him and, to be fair, he would not have wanted me around either. Marquez is very big!” On the rumors: “This award is given mostly to European men, sometimes to some European girl, but it’s not for people like me, I don’t think about that. Don’t get me wrong: a check is always welcome, ha ha!”
